Quote:You seem pretty knowledgeable on the subject.   May I ask a few questions? 

 

If we could split the world's climate scientists into two camps: believers and skeptics, what percentage would be believers and what percentage would be skeptics?  

 

Do you think the scientists who are "believers" are biased in some way?   If so, is the bias intentional?  

 

You say, "If you look deeply into the temperature and sea level data processing, you will see that there are several adjustments. By coincidence, these adjustments always add alarm to the raw data (cooling the past, warming the present, adding sea level rise to the satellite data that didn't show any).
"

Can you explain that a little more?   What sort of adjustments are being made, and, according to the people making the adjustments, why are these adjustments being made? 

 

What is your background?  (Of course, you don't have to answer if you don't feel like it.  A lot of people don't like to give out information about themselves on the internet.  So I will understand if you don't want to answer.) 

 

1. It depends on what you consider a believer vs. a skeptic. All of the scientists accept the greenhouse effect
 (misnamed, but that doesn't really matter, the effect is still real). All accept the fact that it has warmed since 1979. There is a huge spread in opinion in the amount of warming expected for a doubling of CO2, 1-2K per doubling vs. 4-5K at the upper end. IIRC, the most recent IPCC report has published a range of 1.5 to 4.5. Using temperature and CO2 measurements gives a value in the 1.5 to 2.5 range, depending on which temperature measurements are used. If you divvy the climate scientists up by "big problem" vs. "small or no problem" then as a WAG, I'd guess the percentages are about 70-30.

 

2. Yes, but mostly unintentional. There is a selection effect in play; if someone isn't a believer that person is much less likely to go into the field. How many athiests apply for the priesthood? Also, non-believers have a much harder road to a PhD since most of their advisors and committee members are invested in global warming being a problem.

 

If you are asking about the research, there is also an unintentional effect in play here. If a scientist gets a result that doesn't agree with his pre-conceived opinion, he'll double and triple check the results. If the results agree he won't bother to re-check. A lot of the adjustments to the raw data are also affected by this. If the adjustment trends to cooling it is questioned, if it trends to warming it is accepted immediately.

 

3. The raw temperatures are adjusted in several ways. One method (called homogenization) is to compare results to nearby stations and filter out any abrupt changes that only appear in one station. This is reasonable, but will filter out necessary corrections of drift. For example, in the case of temperature stations, they are painted bright white to prevent sunlight heating of the box containing the thermometer. As they age, paint will weather away and/or they will get dirty. When one is repainted, it will appear as an abrupt change. If that change is filtered out, then the intermediate small warmings from aging will add together to create a continual warming.

 

NOAA adjust their temperatures by adding theoretical adjustments to the raw data.

Individual:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/res...ffs_pg.gif

Total:
    http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/res...raw_pg.gif

 

The biggest adjustment is for time of observation differences. This is not done on a site by site basis (which IMO, is the scientifically-correct way), but is just a theoretical value added to the final result. The one adjustment which cools the trend, the urban heating effect, is a suprisingly small adjustment. Note that the total sum of the corrections adds 0.4F to the warming. About half of the reported warming is due to corrections.


There are also annual adjustments to the temperature vs. time series. These always increase warming compared to the previous year's published series, usually by cooling the past. These are defended as being correct, but when every adjustment is in the same direction year after year it's certainly suspicious. Here is an example of adjustments from a previously published result by the same group.



http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.c...tments.jpg

 

Satellite measurements of sea level are also adjusted. If you're a glutton for punishment, here's a link:


http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/ml/ocean/J2_ha...no_rev.pdf

 

One quote:


 

The range reported on the OSTM/Jason-2 (O)(I)GDR has already been corrected for a variety of 

calibration and instrument effects, including calibration errors, pointing angle errors, center of 

gravity motion, and terms related to the altimeter acceleration such as Doppler shift and oscillator 

drift. The sum total of these corrections also appears on the (O)(I)GDR for each of the Ku and C 

 

band ranges (see net_instr_corr_ku and net_instr_corr_c). 

 

How much these adjustments change the sea level rise is beyond my desire to dig that deeply. One of the world experts on sea level, Dr. Nils Morner, claims that the satellite measurements are adjusted so that the rise agrees with the pre-satellite value (specifically Hong Kong tidal measurements). Take all such claims skeptically, but he was an expert. You'll find that almost all of the publically expressed skepticism is from older scientists. They can afford to express skepticism because they have nothing to lose. For a young scientist to express skepticism risks being ostracized. Of course, that don't mean that the skeptics are right, but it's another factor to consider.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/colum...-told.html

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